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Ep 58: Black Earth Wisdom
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Hey y'all and welcome back to season 10 of Hoodoo Plant Mamas. It's our 5 year anniversary! We talk about our journey with the podcast as well as our future plans. We break down the book Black Earth Wisdom by Leah Penniman, discuss the work of Black environmentalists, and talk about Black folk's history with the land in the United States.
RESOURCES
- Black Earth Wisdom by Leah Penniman
- Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman
- "Residents heartbroken after city rips out shared garden" by Kristen Lawrence. TheCoolDown.
- "Peoria community garden destroyed by city" by Shabnam Danesh. Central Illinois Proud.
- Tea with Queen and J
Create your podcast today! #madeonzencastr
BOOKSHOP
https://bookshop.org/shop/hoodooplantmamas
Apocalypse Still by Leah Nicole Whitcomb
About the Boy by Leah Nicole Whitcomb
Between Us (pre-order) by Leah Nicole Whitcomb
SOCIAL MEDIA
Instagram: @hoodooplantmamas
DONATE
Paypal: paypal.me/hoodooplantmamas
Cashapp: cash.me/$hoodooplantmamas
This podcast was created, hosted, and produced by Dani & Leah.
Our music was created by Ghrey, and our artwork was designed by Bianca.
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Transcript
Kickoff and Gratitude Journey
00:00:01
Speaker
Hoodoo plants, mamas. Get your soul fed and your spirit ridden. This here in the trend, I possessed the power from way back when.
00:00:15
Speaker
Back when folk was stripped from all of their kin, so they had to find the magic within. Ancestors, they gather my urge. I conjure at my altar.
00:00:26
Speaker
Hoodoo plants, mamas.
00:00:33
Speaker
We just out here trying to water our plants and mind our business. Everybody from the deep south, man, everybody can't have culture like us.
Podcast Evolution and Community Significance
00:00:45
Speaker
Hey y'all and welcome back to season 10 of Hoodoo Plant Mamas. I'm your co-host Leah Nicole and I'm Dani B. And before we get started today, Dani B, what are you feeling grateful for? i am grateful to be here, to be present.
00:01:04
Speaker
Past few weeks have been really stressful so I'm just thankful for some calm in my life. I'm gonna say same. i feel like right now it's kind of ah the calm before the storm.
00:01:17
Speaker
So I am grateful just to have like a little bit of a break because the past few weeks have been hectic for me as well. So this season is our tenth season.
00:01:29
Speaker
We've done nine seasons so far of Who Do Plant Mamas. We have been going for five years. We started in October of 2020. And so do you want to talk about the journey so far,
Pandemic Origins and Listener Connections
00:01:43
Speaker
Dani?
00:01:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's been really interesting. I think we started during a time where we both were experiencing different types of isolation. My 2020, there was really no one in my bubble. i was alone. I didn't even have a cat at that time.
00:01:59
Speaker
And my plants were really my companions. And we bonded over that sort of our like separate developing relationships with plants and our spiritual practice and ancestors and We didn't really know what was going to come of this, actually.
00:02:20
Speaker
And we made so many, like, really beautiful and meaningful connections with people. We've met listeners. Like, I've met people that are like, oh, let's see your podcast in the most random places.
00:02:33
Speaker
And the fact that we have apparently have had impacts on people has really been a blessing.
Future of the Podcast and Self-Care Balance
00:02:40
Speaker
So the next phase of our journey is really figuring out the future for us and the show and what we want it to look like and how we can continue to do this thing that we really love. And that has been a source of community for us while also taking care of ourselves.
00:02:56
Speaker
Because at times I feel like we both overextended to for this podcast. And that's why... You know, the last season we did was kind of short. Niggas had a lot going on.
00:03:08
Speaker
And I'm sure you do. I'm sure people listening to this. um And the fact that, you know, most people, honestly, and I know this from being a listener podcasts and most people would have canned this because a lot of people get into this to make profit.
00:03:23
Speaker
and And that's fine. Like you're putting in labor and working. We're a two person team. We don't got nobody doing the editing and all that. We doing everything. And Leah has done a lot of the heavy lifting with editing, especially because I was in grad school a good chunk of that time working.
00:03:38
Speaker
When we first started Not just the editing but social media So yeah we we put a lot into this the The best thing we've got out of it Is the connections Is a meeting people You know like Hess Love And Julia Mallory So many different people you know what I mean And so I'm really thankful for that I do want to say when we started in 2020, I had just quit my job.
New Job and Podcast Consistency
00:04:05
Speaker
And so for me, it was a lot easier to be able to focus on, you know, the editing and the social media and all those things. These are things I've also worked in for the past several years.
00:04:18
Speaker
But now I am starting a new job. I'm actually going to be working in the woods in the Oconee National Forest in Georgia. So when you came to me with this topic, I was like, wow, this is like right on brand for like what I'm about to do next in my life.
00:04:37
Speaker
But also i did want to say like in the future because I am going to be working because a lot of this podcast has relied on like me not having a job to be able to edit and to be able to do the social media like yeah we don't know.
00:04:54
Speaker
how the future looks and we don't we can't promise consistency after this season but we did kind of want to bring another season and we did want to explain like what's going on behind the scenes to be like there's a lot of stuff going on we really do love this podcast we really do love having this platform but yeah life life be life and so With that, Dani, would you like to introduce what we are talking about
Nature and Spirituality Exploration
00:05:20
Speaker
this season?
00:05:20
Speaker
Yes. So this season, we're talking about the earth, which means we're talking about everything, including you. I want to preface this with we're recording this months in advance, but it's probably still going to be relevant when you hear it.
00:05:34
Speaker
Not too long ago, i was talking with an elder and there was a moment where our conversation had like, you know, that silence after you just get through talking about someone. And she looked at me and she said, it's interesting because everything is so bad that everybody is kind of acting like everything's normal.
00:05:56
Speaker
And I've been thinking about that. So much. And, you know, I've sporadically been online. Many of the pages I follow are reporting on Gaza and Sudan and Congo and all the shit that's happening in the U.S. and all the violence that's happening against immigrant folks and homeless folks. And the timeline is going from influencers trying to get clicks to corpses of children,
00:06:25
Speaker
A random person announcing an engagement or a new book and then something really horrible that Trump just signed an executive order for. It's extremely disorienting.
00:06:36
Speaker
So for me, we can't exist in this moment witnessing all these atrocities weathering under the violence of our government without talking about the earth.
00:06:48
Speaker
And so this season is going to be grounded in thinking about not just Black folks, but just humanity's relationship or lack thereof with the natural world.
00:06:58
Speaker
And our guiding text through this season is going to be Black Earth Wisdom by Leah Penniman, who's the co-founder of Soul Fire Farm. So today we're really going to reflect on the book and its relevancy to what we are and have been living through for a very long time.
00:07:18
Speaker
The book starts with an intro and then sort of like a prayer to um ancestors and elders who have been like earth stewards, environmentalists, activists, advocates when it comes to taking care of the earth.
00:07:33
Speaker
And then the next big section is spirit. And the part of spirit that really resonated with me was sort of thinking about the relationship between Abrahamic faiths and environmentalism.
00:07:47
Speaker
Because if you grew up in Christian church, you might remember in Genesis or one of the versions of Genesis that it asserts that man has dominion over the earth.
00:07:58
Speaker
And it's often framed, humans are often framed as not being a part of earth, but above it. And so I love that in this section, two of the people Leah spoke with were a black Muslim and a black Christian.
00:08:14
Speaker
actually think this person practiced Catholicism and the ways they've shaped and grew up like this with their parents, shaping their spiritual practice um in a way that incorporates sort of like African traditional religions and Abraham Abdul-Mateen said,
00:08:44
Speaker
on it or over it abraham abdul lama maein who is a black Muslim says, God has given us a tool to anchor and orient to cosmological reality, to connect to the movement of ourselves on this planet in relationship with the sun and the moon.
00:09:03
Speaker
And to remind us that we are part of this whole cosmic experience, rather than feeling small and insignificant. I feel important and a part of everything in creation.
00:09:15
Speaker
I really resonated with that because I've expressed the sentiment of feeling small and insignificant in this world. And I've seen others express that sentiment.
00:09:26
Speaker
And it oftentimes it's in reverence of how big and expansive the world is. But his framing of that really challenged me to like rethink how we talk about ourselves in relation to the earth because we are ah part of this. We're neither superior nor inferior to the earth.
00:09:45
Speaker
So why should we feel small? Why shouldn't we feel as powerful and grand as the trees? Because we get to live and breathe and community with all of this, with all of the living creations on this earth. And so that was just a really beautiful quote, but also just something that I've been sitting with, like a really grounding moment for me as I dove deeper into this text.
Personal and Cultural Connection to Earth
00:10:08
Speaker
So I like that as well, because I think it's a reminder that like, Even if we do feel small, like i feel small standing at the edge on the shore of the ocean or looking up at the night sky. But it's also like this reminder that like I'm still considered as being part of this. Like I am an intentional part this.
00:10:32
Speaker
of this planet and for me i'm like that's where the power comes from even if i have no control over this like i am meant to be here i was still considered i was intended to be here by what i believe is a creator and so what i really liked about ibrahim and his story is that he talked about praying with the sun and moon and that that keeps him in his natural cycle because the position of both of those changes throughout the day, throughout the seasons.
00:11:02
Speaker
And so he's really in touch with that. It reminded me of this root worker that's on TikTok. So take it with a grain of salt. But she was saying it's very hard to hex a Muslim because of how spiritually strong they are because they pray very often. They're more in touch with these natural cycles so I thought that was interesting as well for me when I was reading this the Catholic Christian man who was interviewed he's a black farmer named Chris Bolden Newsome he's originally from Mississippi and he said a lot of people migrated north and became faithless but I don't know any black people in the south who don't acknowledge God
00:11:43
Speaker
And I think I have met some Black people who are more agnostic, but I do think that growing up in the South, you have sort of an intuitive understanding of creation.
00:11:55
Speaker
and a creator, I did not have to be told God existed when I was younger. Like I was looking at the trees, I was looking at the sky, the birds, I was seeing the way that the trees went through this cycle and they gave us food and how it shelters so many different animals.
00:12:14
Speaker
And then I'm looking at the animals, I'm looking at the land. I saw the other day, this a deer that was on the side of the road. And two days later, all that was left was bones.
00:12:25
Speaker
right Because these vultures came and took, and it's like everything is able to take care of itself. There's a system for every single animal, for every single plant. And I'm like, I don't know how you can look at that and say, God's not real.
00:12:40
Speaker
Or at least look at that and be like, there's not some... grand design going on so that's the one thing that I thought was very interesting because I do agree like being in the south is very hard to deny the existence of something that's a good point um in truth that quote about people moving migrating north and becoming faithless for some reason I felt a little resistance to that because Mississippians go Mississippi no matter where they go but I but then I started thinking about that faithless through the lens of some of those practices
00:13:22
Speaker
And like
Critique of Colonialism in Environmentalism
00:13:23
Speaker
beliefs. And even with my grandmother, there was just certain things she didn't really subscribe to, although I know that she grew up with those things like the superstitions and just some of these rituals that were part of that like black country life.
00:13:41
Speaker
And so through that lens, I'm like, yeah, that was seen as primitive. We've literally seen videos of Black folk moving up North, particularly who reached a certain class status and they really looked down on those, on on country folk and folk that they felt like were andin unintelligent or uneducated and still believing in that, ah what they call it, mumbo jumbo. And so, yeah.
00:14:08
Speaker
Yeah, I think there is a faithlessness that came with that migration. I think it's connected to what we'll talk about later, which is being in a lot of ways intentionally and strategically isolated from the natural world.
00:14:26
Speaker
Yeah, that was actually in this section, in the wow section. As I was reading this, something that reoccurred for me was the destruction of whiteness. And I've talked before, I'm pretty sure on this podcast, how colonialism is damaging to people, land and animals.
00:14:44
Speaker
And this definitely gets more into how it affects the land. So in the wild section, they talk about displacing indigenous people to create this uninhabited wilderness and wilderness connotes untamed, uncontrollable and unknowable.
00:15:03
Speaker
But that's not the truth. Like the land was worked with for the benefit of humans, animals and land. And white explorers rewrote their violent act of displacing indigenous people to protect themselves and And their idea that nature should be delicate and pristine and untouched.
00:15:22
Speaker
Like that idea is what is causing wildfires to spread rampant now because indigenous people knew like you needed to do controlled burns in order to take care of this thing, in order to make sure that this...
00:15:36
Speaker
mass wildfire wouldn't happen but that sort of quote-unquote violence is unfathomable to a precious resource and it was kind of used as justification like oh of course indigenous people don't care about the land because they're burning the ground they're trying to destroy it but by not doing that like you're putting it more at risk And so I think for me, it was very frustrating because whiteness will take this thing, claim ownership over it, but then have no experience with it.
00:16:08
Speaker
And so that was something that was referenced in the previous section in Spirit, when white people had Black people work with the land, But then when they moved west of the Mississippi, they were like, oh, we know how to grow food. Black people can do it. We can do too.
00:16:23
Speaker
And then they ruined the soil within a few decades. Like a millennium of indigenous work was undone through whiteness, through the hubris of whiteness. And it's that hubris that will kill us. Like whiteness as a system means not knowing and honoring your limits and And instead viewing your limitations as a weakness, like we are not supposed to know everything.
00:16:46
Speaker
We're not supposed to do everything. I think it goes back to a quote I shared not too long ago, perhaps on our Instagram, talking about ah people, like an entity that believes that they own everything, that they own the sun and the moon.
00:17:05
Speaker
And it's connected to that idea that they can own people. And all that has led to is destruction. So that's what I was thinking about, sort of, this just like how whiteness is connected to this like perpetual sense of ownership of the entire earth.
00:17:22
Speaker
And now trying to extend that to outer space because it seems like there's just this rabid desire to want to control everything. And you can't control everything.
00:17:33
Speaker
Yeah. Also in this section, in the WOW section, co-founder and CEO GirlTrek, T. Morgan Dixon said, what it comes down to is that by any means necessary, we have to live.
00:17:48
Speaker
I'm not going to ask permission to save my own life. As Black women, in order to save our own lives, we have to disrupt a system designed to kill us. And I think that that is really how we need to see a lot of environmental work. Like what in our community needs to be done? We need to go do it.
00:18:06
Speaker
There was a later chapter in this book where they talked about using policy to help a community, how they turned an old abandoned warehouse that no one was using or that people were using for like crime.
00:18:17
Speaker
They turned into a greenhouse to grow food and herbs for the community. They were able to design hubs of criminal activities into community spaces without displacing the Black population. Like, we have the ability to make this world better.
00:18:32
Speaker
but we have to stop asking for permission from people who don't care about us and just get to work.
Nature Access as a Human Right
00:18:37
Speaker
I was thinking about this question that Leah asked of whether access to wilderness was a representation issue, a civil rights issue or both.
00:18:47
Speaker
And Rue Mapp mentioned that the Wilderness wilderness Act and the Civil Rights Act were passed in the same year, which is interesting. And we don't have time to get into the weeds of that today, but to me...
00:19:00
Speaker
Not having access to the wilderness is a human rights issue, like full stop. think about the fact that Black folks get pushed into these urban enclaves.
00:19:13
Speaker
No trees, no granary to protect them from the heat of the sun. I spent the first eight years of my life in Chicago, and I remember those hot summer days where the kids or somebody would figure out a way to like unlock the fire hydrant and the water would just spray out. And this was something that was going on like in black neighborhoods, even when my dad was growing up.
00:19:37
Speaker
And it was like going to the water park. Like I had been out there a couple of times with my cousins when I was really small, they would put me in a swimsuit and we would go out there and play. And obviously, you know, this is a safety hazard because my we were actually talking about this recently with my grandma when she visited me and she was like, yeah. And then when there was a fire,
00:19:55
Speaker
They couldn't get no water out of it. But it's like, aside from that, it's just like you're literally depriving people of access to not just the protection of the trees, but fresh water. They don't get to swim in lakes or get access to a beach.
00:20:12
Speaker
We already know the history of like black folks and trying to get access to community pools. And so you manufacture these like inner city problems, you know,
00:20:23
Speaker
We know. All of this stuff has like an economic, physical, and emotional impact. like And also spiritual. you're You're literally stripping people access to to the earth, to their relationship.
00:20:39
Speaker
Even in spite of that, Black folks always... find a way to take care of each other. i was also reminded of the fact that i can't, I couldn't find the article, but I'll never forget. There was this community that did a garden, a community garden in the middle of the city and the landlord or somebody basically destroyed it, said that they couldn't do it.
00:20:59
Speaker
Evil, violent, like what would What is the reason? What is so like what is so threatening about letting a community grow their own food, grow trees?
00:21:13
Speaker
You know what I mean? Like this is intentional. This is intentional like violence. So we have to do what we can to protect ourselves. We also have to reclaim our relationship to the earth.
00:21:26
Speaker
And I would say a lot of the ways we saw that happening, and I think it's still happening, is people getting plants. Getting people into plants, I think, is a good like gateway to like that connection.
00:21:39
Speaker
um Because plants are living things. Do you want to take a break? Yes, we can.
00:21:50
Speaker
Let's get into the ways you can support the Hoodoo Plant Mamas. One is through our bookshop where you can buy the books that we've discussed with our Writing the Spirit guests. We have Hoodoo's Beginner's Guide, Tarot, and Oracle Decks, as well as our top reading picks.
00:22:04
Speaker
You can also buy my books. Every purchase you make helps support our show. Check us out at bookshop.org slash shop slash Hoodoo Plant Mamas or the link in our show notes.
00:22:16
Speaker
A note on Patreon, we'll be transitioning off Patreon and we're actually going to get more active on our YouTube channel. Stay tuned for more updates on that. We're still working through the kinks of that. But if you are a patron, it is paused. You will not be getting charged. It's going to be paused indefinitely and then eventually we're just going to delete it.
00:22:33
Speaker
So... But other ways you can support us include rating and reviewing the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Follow us on Instagram at hoodooplantmamas. You can also do a one-time donation via Cash App at dollar sign hoodooplantmamas or on our PayPal it pudu plant mamas at at gmail.com.
00:22:54
Speaker
Also, thank you, Precious, for your donation. We really appreciate it Sending you all the love and that it will come back to you threefold. All right, let's get back to the show.
Reconnecting with Earth Post-Cultural Trauma
00:23:11
Speaker
In the chapter, Soul, Leah Penniman starts by writing, the truth is that for thousands of years black people have had a sacred and sustainable relationship with seoul that far surpasses our two hundred and forty six years of enslavement and seventy five years of sharecropping in the united states For many, this period of land-based terror has devastated that connection.
00:23:36
Speaker
We have confused the subjugation of our ancestors experienced on land with the land herself, naming her the oppressor and running toward paved streets without looking back.
00:23:48
Speaker
We do not stoop, sweat, harvest, or even get dirty because we imagine that would revert us back to bondage. And in spirit, Black farmer Chris Bolden Newsom said, the land was the scene of the crime.
00:24:01
Speaker
And so would say like, this is a common sentiment, even in the South, like a lot of black people equate being outside working in gardens with being slaves. Like when I was in second or third grade, my daddy decided he wanted to garden.
00:24:18
Speaker
My papa, his daddy is a farmer. And so he got him to help him, you know, till the land. And then we had to drag bags of fertilizer and seeds and buckets of water And we joked about our daddy treating us like slaves.
00:24:34
Speaker
And this was something also noticed when I read The Stars and the Blackness Between Them Janata Petras. ah One of the girls complained because her daddy also had a garden and made her work it. And she was like, he's treating us like slaves. And I think that there's this like,
00:24:52
Speaker
ignorant notion that a lot of us have is that we have this fear of being seen as a stereotype. And it's one of my favorite phrases by J of T with Quinn and Jay, who said black people have a fear of behaving badly in front of white folks. And,
00:25:09
Speaker
And I think a lot of us distance ourselves from this image of slavery, from this image of slaves, is because we're afraid that if we relate to that in some sort of way, it kind of justifies slavery. It justifies the way that white people treat us. And it's like, i get it because a lot of white supremacy will use anything as justification for the violence.
00:25:31
Speaker
But I also... I think it's important for us to stop letting that from letting us live our full lives because white people do not own the earth.
00:25:44
Speaker
And a lot of our ideas that there are certain things that we can and can't do reinforce this idea that they do. White people do not own the earth. And that's that. Like that is a sentence and a sermon and a poem.
00:25:59
Speaker
Let's get into it. There's a question Leah asks that I'd been interested in us reflecting on. And it's what experiences from your early life connected you to the joy that can be pulled from the earth? I think that's a good question to reflect on and thinking about sort of the trauma that we've internalized that kind of makes people resistant to to get out onto on the land and work. My daddy talked about visiting Mississippi when he was younger.
00:26:27
Speaker
He was just like, yeah, I want him to be out there working. In that heat, you know, I'm a city boy, you know what I mean? And so, yeah, I'm thinking about what memories do you have that kind of connected to to to this joy in the earth and the natural world in your childhood or early life?
00:26:44
Speaker
I think for me, it was like I had a dog. Her name was Princess. and she would just, she was loose. Yeah. So she would just be, you know, walking around and we lived in rural Mississippi. So I would walk with her We were walking through the forest.
00:27:01
Speaker
I was walking through the forest barefoot, which is something I'm afraid to do right now. So I was like, where's that little girl inside of me? That was fearless and adventurous. But, you know, ah me and my siblings, we would also be in the forest, you know, and we had made plans to make it like a hangout spot because it was nice and it was cool in there.
00:27:25
Speaker
And we would eat like berries off of trees. No concern about whether or not they were poisonous. And they weren't, right? None of us died. There was also this, it wasn't quite a pear.
00:27:38
Speaker
I don't know what kind of, I still don't know what kind of fruit it was. But yeah, that's really what I remember. i guess that's my joys. It's like being in nature, exploring, being adventurous, eating the fruits of nature and just like,
00:27:55
Speaker
not really having a care in the world. Child, in the country, fruit just be popping out of nowhere. Muscadines will grow anywhere. You could be driving down the road and it's just on the side. All them fruit trees and stuff from my childhood, they probably not even, they probably don't even bear fruit anymore.
00:28:15
Speaker
All of my memories with the natural world, most of them are in Mississippi, even before I permanently moved there as a child. And it was during those summers with my cousins when we would be out on the ground digging around looking for four leaf clovers because it was good luck.
00:28:34
Speaker
Just... We was just in the dirt, in the grass. We would be picking up ladybugs. There was just this joy, but also we just had a very natural relationship. so that There was so much we weren't afraid of. Now, you know, you get a little... i'm kind of like returning back to that sort of wonder that I had as a child.
00:28:58
Speaker
But yeah, those were some of my best memories. We was just outside. We was outside. We was just finding the most random stuff to do. We wasn't playing tag.
00:29:10
Speaker
We was in that dirt doing something. Ooh, an ant bed. Girl.
00:29:19
Speaker
Chaos Because now somebody's going to be crying in a minute And then we're going to all get in trouble Because our and little ankle's about to get ate up And you know what? We're going to do it again tomorrow Okay?
00:29:31
Speaker
death That is a relationship Like kids, nobody has a better relationship with the With the literal earth The red dirt The the trees and the bugs than kids We was in community so that's That's what comes back to me.
00:29:50
Speaker
I'm glad you brought up bugs because I completely forgot like ladybugs, fireflies. i was just at my parents' house a couple months ago and there were fireflies. I was like, I don't remember the last time I saw a firefly.
00:30:03
Speaker
So it was like, dang, it's just like a wonderland. That's what it felt like being outside in Mississippi. It was.
Environmental Justice and Racism
00:30:11
Speaker
So in the defense section, marine biologist Dr. Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson says, the daily burdens of racism further inhibit people of color's full participation in environmental advocacy.
00:30:26
Speaker
People of color are significantly more concerned about climate change than white people are. 49% of white people are concerned compared to 57% of black people and 69% of Latine people.
00:30:38
Speaker
That's tens of millions of people of color in the U.S. s who could be a part of the solutions we need if unburdened by white supremacy. And so I was talking about this on Close Friends and theorizing about the smoke alarm phenomenon among Black people and those who can't hear it.
00:30:57
Speaker
ah Because most of my family, they claim they can't hear when the smoke alarm is going off. And I think a lot of it has to do with like the daily... pressures of having to deal with racism, like structural, interpersonal, all of it.
00:31:12
Speaker
And I think that it kind of freezes our responses in a way. Like we can care a lot about something, but not have the mental bandwidth to address it because racism has us dealing with 50 million things that we need to survive.
00:31:28
Speaker
And so a while ago, me and my granny were complaining about how hot it was during the summer, how the heat is going to make people sick. And we need to find ways to keep people inside and air conditioned during this time.
00:31:42
Speaker
And she was talking about how every year it gets hotter and hotter and hotter. And she was coming up with great solutions. Like she cares about the planet getting hotter. She's caring about what that's going to do with people.
00:31:53
Speaker
And as she was saying, people absolutely should not be out in excess heat. People shouldn't be out in cold either. we should be properly insulated indoors. Everyone should be able to shelter in place during extreme weather.
00:32:07
Speaker
But racism won't let certain people work indoors during extreme weather. And then capitalism won't let us take time off because the bills are still due on the first. And so it's like...
00:32:18
Speaker
There are people that are in our community and they care and they're like, we need to find ways to protect people during, you know, climate catastrophe. But it's also like they're so the structures won't let us protect people.
00:32:32
Speaker
Remember when everything shut down and nobody was working and it was still landlords trying to push evictions? Yes. You know the level of delusion? If we not working, where do you think you gonna get money?
00:32:44
Speaker
It was a wild. Sometimes I think about that and landlords, you never beat in the evil allegations. Y'all are like cops for homes.
00:32:56
Speaker
That's how i feel about it. Environmentalist Chris Hill said in the book, the environmental conservation movement has protected places over people. It's kind of connected to what I mentioned about the other person who said that the Civil Rights Act and the Wilderness Act was passed in the same year and kind of separating it, which they touched on in the book as well. It gets to the ways environmental justice is I don't want to say environmental justice because environmental justice, it's very specific.
00:33:27
Speaker
But people who will purport to be environmentalists, how they disconnect land death and genocide and racism and sexism and homophobia and transphobia, they try to separate all that from what it means to take care of the earth, what it means to be a steward of the earth. And it's like, kind of like what you were talking about before, protecting the land they killed.
00:33:52
Speaker
And exploited humans to get. It kind of reminds me of like self-righteous vegans and these animal rights activists. Humans are also animals, but because these are people who often perpetuate this really nasty thing.
00:34:07
Speaker
kind of like racism and xenophobia and like not recognizing humans as being a part of this sort of cycle and not really caring or considering how their food is sourced or who's picking the food, whose labor is going into this, who's being exploited and harmed for their comfort and sense of superiority. And it goes back to this idea where like believing that you own everything, right?
00:34:33
Speaker
You own the right to advocate for non-human animals and to like chastise folks of color because you feel like somehow we are less environmentally conscious or we care less about animals when there are literal genocides happening that are not just happening against people.
00:34:55
Speaker
When these bombs are dropping, On people, because that's what we're thinking about when we're thinking about genocide. We're thinking about people and we should. But it's it's not just people. It's a living beings.
00:35:08
Speaker
Human, non-human. It's livestock. It's insects. It's insects. It's so many different things that are a part of an entire ecosystem.
00:35:20
Speaker
And it's like literally destroying the environment to steal land that is going to not, it's not going to do anything for you. You've destroyed the ecosystem.
00:35:31
Speaker
you destroy You've killed the land. Nothing there is alive. And so it's like repackaging after benefiting from and perpetuating abuse against the earth and other living things that are a part of it, then they get to repackage it into something else to position themselves as a savior.
00:35:52
Speaker
This is what a lot of non-Black, non-POC people, this is how they engage in environmentalism.
00:36:05
Speaker
you're absolutely right it's all a performance it really is and it's just like so angering to me because I'm like even there is insistence that like the rest of us aren't doing things right like the amount of times I've had to fight white vegans because they're telling me I'm a terrible person for eating an animal but it's like I agree with you like I do think that Factory farming is not the way to treat animals. I also don't think eating meat is bad, right? think there's a way that is more respectful to the life of the animal when you eat meat versus the way that the United States currently does it.
00:36:44
Speaker
And so you telling me I'm a bad person, I'm ah the worst person on the face of this planet, it's not helpful. It's not helpful. It's not helpful. And it shows a lack of education in the natural world because the more I watch, I be watching these and nature shows. Am I devastated sometimes? Yeah, because listen, they in the trenches.
00:37:06
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. At any point a fucking cheetah is coming out of nowhere and you better try to get your kids and go. Somebody gonna get caught. It's just like who? It's just a matter of who?
00:37:16
Speaker
All y'all ain't out running the cheetah. We are not the only animals within this system that eats other animals. That is literally a part of this cycle. This is a part of our ecosystem.
00:37:30
Speaker
So even like the basis of like trying to make vegetarianism and veganism into some like moral thing is problematic.
00:37:41
Speaker
And it shows you don't know shit about animals, beloved. Yo, activism for animals. It's cats and dogs and cows, the animals that you see that have been like domesticated in some way. You don't know shit about what they doing in the rainforest because I tell you what, a fucking sloth fall out of that tree.
00:37:59
Speaker
but there I love sloths now. They're slow as hell. They are the epitome of take your time. Okay. I ain't got nowhere to go. They fuck around and fall on that, I don't know, one of those trees or they're low on the ground for whatever reason and they don't get back up there quick enough.
00:38:18
Speaker
It's lights out. It's dinner time. And that's just that. That is how it is. That is how they moving out there in the wilderness amongst the trees that you claim you want to save.
00:38:29
Speaker
Like they are not living in reality. It is a delusion. It is performance, like you said, and is go watch a go watch a damn nature show or something. And watch how the animals are living because that will really give you a lot of perspective. This is coming from somebody who I no longer eat land animals and I don't know if I'll ever return because of...
00:38:50
Speaker
reasons you just specified around like how it is produced but like everybody let's just get real that's all i'm saying because i'm learning a lot from these little nature documentaries that's all from from the people that's out there looking actually had a friend who was vegetarian she's probably still vegetarian but i was telling her about my cat Nell and how if there was a lizard in the house, like it would be, that lizard had two seconds and it was split in half.
00:39:24
Speaker
And she was like, why would she do something like that? i was like, she's a cat, girl. She's a carnivore. I can't stop her. She gonna start fighting me.
00:39:35
Speaker
But it was this like idea of like, wow, why would she eat meat? Because she's a cat, girl. But in the last section of this witness, ah Leah Penniman was kind of talking about our role in terms of climate disaster and what we should be doing. And climate reporter Kendra Pierre-Louis said...
Consumer Habits and Climate Change
00:39:57
Speaker
Even though societal consumption is clearly the root cause of our climate woes, we don't act because of one unsettling truth. If we were to reduce our consumption to a level that was ecologically sustainable, our entire global economic system would collapse.
00:40:14
Speaker
This isn't hyperbole. Our economic system is based on the need for perpetual growth, We either grow our economy or it dies. As measured by the GDP, each year the economy must be bigger than the last.
00:40:26
Speaker
And so in this chapter, they also talked about how our best climate years were during recessions, 2008, 2009, 2020. But this is something that has been bothering me since 2020. Like I saw the way the people in power reacted when we stayed home, when we saved our money, when we paid our debts,
00:40:47
Speaker
when we didn't spend on frivolous things, they panicked. And to me, that was information. And I think ever since then, I think the solution for a lot of our problems has been really simple. We need to spend less on everything. We need to quit buying clothes if you don't need them.
00:41:06
Speaker
Quit buying little trinkets. Use what you got. Stock up only on essentials. Not only will that save your wallet, but But it will also save the planet and it will bring the downfall of the United States. So I think a lot of us see what's happened with Target.
00:41:23
Speaker
And like, I think for me, I'm like, the solution is so that simple. It's like... Quit spending your money. Like just quit spending your money. If we hoard our reit money, if we pull our resources, i think a lot of billionaires would panic because as we've seen during the pandemic, the transfer of wealth comes from us and it goes to them.
00:41:45
Speaker
And so when we stop spending our money, giving our money to them, then we can start making some changes. Even the way they was acting about like still trying to get people back into the office, right?
00:41:57
Speaker
This read me real bad. And we need it. Like, this is why I told myself, and I still got to just, like, I feel like I need to enroll in some kind of class or watch some videos.
00:42:10
Speaker
Learning how to make your own clothes, because a lot of the shit we got can be repurposed. And it's so hard. As someone who went down a few sizes...
00:42:22
Speaker
The inclination to like buy and then, you know, struggling to get to know my body again, like, or trying, getting reacquainted with a new body, but separating that from capitalism, because there's this inclination of, well, got to just buy new stuff. and But now I don't know how I feel in new stuff and all of that. When it's like, girl, truth be told, it's easier to repurpose shit that got too big than it is stuff that got too small.
00:42:50
Speaker
Like, yeah. You know what I mean? So it's hard. It's by design, though. You know what I mean? Like, it's really hard to really get out of that consumerism. But that is that is a big one.
00:43:04
Speaker
That's a big one. we We really got to let go. especially Amazon Prime. I know some people have, but a lot of people haven't. And some people, it's like, it's it's an accessibility thing. Like, I can get these things I need without leaving my home.
00:43:18
Speaker
Maybe that's because of, like, chronic illness or whatever reason you can't leave your home. And it's like, we need something else that can fulfill the same need, but is that's not exploitive and violent to people in the earth.
00:43:37
Speaker
So I've seen a few different women who experiment. So I was actually on somebody else's Amazon prime and got kicked off. So I don't have, so I don't have Amazon prime anymore.
00:43:50
Speaker
But I've seen women who are like trying to, and it could just be my algorithm. I only see women, but they're trying to stop spending money on Target, on Amazon, on Walmart, all of these places. And they have been going into their local community. And they're like, because of that, like I get all of these other needs fulfilled. Like I don't feel isolated and lonely anymore because I'm not just clicking things on my website.
00:44:16
Speaker
computer or on my phone and putting into cart. Instead, I have to go talk to somebody, right? Instead, I'm like, oh, I have this problem at my house. So they're helping me. I'm talking with the owner of the store and he's helping me, you know, figure these things out.
00:44:31
Speaker
Instead, I'm like, oh, i want to get a gift for my friend and they're helping me. And I'm going, I'm talking to people, I'm having interactions. I feel like I'm a part of my community now. And all I'm doing is not shopping on Amazon or not shopping on Target or Walmart.com or things like that.
00:44:47
Speaker
And it's like a lot of what we are looking for, we have been lied to and told you will get it once you buy something. That is literally, I will say I was in a marketing boot camp. It really was eye opening for me.
00:45:03
Speaker
But that was really the cornerstone of marketing. You give people a problem. It could be a fake problem, like hip dips or whatever. You give people a problem, you give them a price point and be like, for this price, your problem will be fixed.
00:45:19
Speaker
And I think a lot of us right now have problems of community, have problems of self-maintenance and self-care. And we have been lied to and be like, oh, for a certain price, right?
00:45:30
Speaker
It will be fixed. When a lot of times it's like, what will fix your problems is consuming less, having the desire to consume less, right? Being out in your community, being around out with your neighbors, being outside, right? that That is what will fix your problems more than anything that you can pay for. And that's that.
00:45:54
Speaker
i if I could be a part of like, even just a little van that comes and picks people up to go to the store and stuff, that would be so helpful for me. Um, now I've been standing 10 toes down on the target cause I used to be target was my regular place to order groceries.
00:46:14
Speaker
Um, But i' it's it's so hard. Like, I remember in Oxford hearing a white liberal talk about, like, they don't shop at Walmart. Well, good for you, girl.
00:46:30
Speaker
Good for you because the Walmart is the one store that a lot of little small towns, it's the one big major store that they got. And they're not just getting groceries. They getting clothes. And don't play with Walmart ah about their little outfits and stuff. Because last time I was up in there, I was looking.
00:46:47
Speaker
i was like... What's going on on here? Okay, it's giving Old Navy same energy, but it always has. you know It's a stigma with shopping from Walmart for clothes, but ah I definitely got me some pieces from out of there that I've had for years. So yeah anyway.
00:47:08
Speaker
The point is. Oh, go ahead. i was going to say my favorite dress is a Walmart dress that I got from the thrift store. And I've had it for like four years. And it's like falling apart. And I'm just stitching it back up because it's my favorite dress. And is I can't find anymore because that season that they made it is gone. So.
00:47:30
Speaker
Yeah, I use ThredUp a lot for clothes, so it's thrifting technically. But I'm saying technically, it is thrifting. But I'm sure there's still some kind of cost with like the shipping like environmentally.
00:47:45
Speaker
Because they do ship pretty fast. And sometimes I'm like, how? How? You know what I mean? Because why does it get here in three days? But...
00:47:57
Speaker
Last question, I wanted to end with how did you feel after reading this
Role of Artists in Ecological Consciousness
00:48:04
Speaker
book? Because I think for me, at times it was overwhelming because a lot is happening right now and it feels like we're not in control of anything that's going on.
00:48:15
Speaker
But at the same time, I felt really hopeful because like we know so much work needs to be done to protect our species on this planet and to know that so many Black people are working today and have been working for decades to protect Black people made me feel like it's not all in vain.
00:48:33
Speaker
Like there's still so much work that needs to be done. um they They definitely need help, but I do feel hopeful that we can make it happen. I do feel hopeful that it is achievable.
00:48:44
Speaker
For me, I'm left thinking about this question Leah asks Alice Walker, which is, what do you see as the role of the writer specifically and the artist generally in inspiring an ecological ethic?
00:48:59
Speaker
To paraphrase Walker, She basically says it's hard for people to defend what they don't know or resonate with, that they can't truly see for what it is. So she says verbatim, artists and poets are essential because they can connect us to what we cannot see. This is something I've been thinking about a lot and what I'm still reflecting on.
00:49:22
Speaker
from this book is specifically my role or our role as writers, as creative people to inspire people to like re-see themselves and to re-see the earth and to recognize that they have a responsibility, not just to themselves and the community, but to the earth that is all connected.
00:49:43
Speaker
How do we sort of contribute to that work or do that work through our own like creative work and lives and that's you know i think that's something to to continue to sit with and meditate on for anybody who is an artist or a writer how we can bring people into seeing the earth through the expansive lens of we are all a part of this this we take care of each other by also taking care of the earth yeah
00:50:18
Speaker
That's where I am. And I think that is a good place to end this episode. If you like this episode, you can like, rate, and review Who Do Plant Mamas on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. If anything from the show resonated with you, make sure to share it with us on social media.
00:50:34
Speaker
You can find us on Instagram at Who Do Plant Mamas. Thank you for listening. And we'll see you in the next episode where we have part two of our discussion on this book. See you then.
00:50:45
Speaker
Bye. Bye.